I’m taking a photo of GJ once a month so her progress, so infinitesimal to us on an everyday basis, is made visible.
There’s been a lot of changes already. Sleeping through is the best one.

You’ll notice she’s in a denim pinafore and red tights now, instead of dungarees. This is because we’ve swapped to cloth nappies in the day (with thanks to Exeter Babies).

An extra thing to think about if you want to use cloth nappies rather than disposables is that modern baby clothes aren’t designed for big bottoms. So she’s in pinafores or trousers a size up from her actual size to allow room. You’ll also need some vest extenders (I got a set from Babykind but want some with different popper sizes to fit non-standard tops).

A design blog I follow, Making It Lovely, decided to record her first child’s first year by taking a photo of her each month in the same outfit on the same background. Here’s Eleanor’s year.

I love this idea. It recreates digitally the photographic updates that used to be sent to distant relatives in my family. So I’m doing the same for Georgina, just for the first year. That means I had to decide on an outfit and a background.

The outfit is easy: red/white striped top and dungarees. It’s a combination I love and will be a wardrobe stable. My sister has sent me a photo of my niece in the same outfit, aged 1, way back in the late ’70s. The background choice was harder. In the end I’m doing two.

‘Baby Human’ is her on an American quilt custom made by Kelly Hale. I was gobsmacked by the work and love that’s gone into the quilt and daren’t use it as a day to day item. I was also delighted that Kelly had picked colours that suit the nursery kit.

‘Tartan’ is Georgina on a tartan travel rug/blanket. I found the rug about two years ago in Otto Retro and bought it instantly, despite the cost of a pristine 1960s wool blanket. It’s the exact same pattern as my own. The earliest photos of me are on my blanket, and I’ve carried it with me through bedsits, shared student houses and rented flats. Mine is worn totally through, as you might expect after nearly forty years of use, with a hole repaired with embroidery silk. I hope Georgina carries hers until it wears out too.

I’m going to dig out a photo of me on my blanket, but it’s behind a lot of boxes in the attic at the moment.

It is actually not surprising when you think about it: Tate Modern was opened in 2000 as one of London’s Millennial projects. None the less it seems odd that it’s ten years old. In part, it feels like it can’t really have been open that long, surely? And in part, it seems so strongly a part of London that it seems to have been around for far longer. When it was first announced, I was disappointed that it was rescuing Bankside power station instead of the more iconic Battersea. But in the decade since “oh, let’s just go for a wander along the South Bank to the Tate” has become a familiar phrase, and one of my favourite ways to pass a sunny Sunday in That London. Tate Modern has become as iconic as the other popular Millennial project, the Wheel.

I’ve mentioned how my love of the galleries, and my magpie-like urge to collate things, combined to create the Tate Galleries flickr group before. This week, after running it for five years, I finally got an email from the Tate itself. It was not telling me to stop it. Instead it was inviting me to join the 10 Years of Tate Modern group and to spread the word via my group.

They’re after people’s ten best photos of the gallery, which will then be fed onto their site. Photos submitted before 16 April may also be picked to appear in a Tate at 10 film that’ll shown on their site.

I’m a fan of museums engaging online. Tate did this with How We Are back in 2007 and hold Flickr-based parties. So I’m really pleased to see them intergrating it into their Tate Modern celebrations: Bankside and Flickr have evolved together over the last decade so it makes sense to enjoy that connection.